Back in March 2012 he got fined $25,000 for tweeting a photo of a butt. At the time he said: “It’s not the smartest move. I understand that now. I just have to be smarter in my decisions…I get a lot of criticism for everything, so I’m not really worried about it. I’m just focused on the game.”

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5. Wild Beasts: Present Tense
6. EMA: Past Life Martyred Saints
8. WU LYF: Go Tell Fire to the Mountain
12. Ciara: Ciara
16. Swans: The Seer
19. Sharon Van Etten: Tramp
25. Pusha T: My Name Is My Name
26. Marnie Stern: Marnie Stern
33. Childish Gambino: Camp
37. Maria Minerva: Will Happiness Find Me?
43. Schoolboy Q: Habits & Contradictions

Tracks

1. Beyoncé: “Halo”
17. Beyoncé: “Countdown”
32. Beyoncé: “Drunk in Love”
38. Beyoncé: “Blow”
43. Man Man: “Head On”

I wrote about “Ride” and “212” for Pitchfork’s tracks list.

In honor of this gross story, I’ve decided to start blogging again here. I’m not going to say it’s because this kid just drove my search traffic up, I’m not going to say it’s because Tumblr is Dead, I’m not going to say it’s because Medium Sucks, I’m not going to say it’s because I’m starting at Google next week, I’m just going to say it’s because ALL of those things.

You the best bride / And I’m the best groom / Wedding presents got my best man at the Best Buy / Buyin’ the Best of Fresh Prince for the bedroom.

The MJ sample means that I could never put it on a Songza playlist, unfortunately.

— Every email you answer generates another 1-3 emails: More questions, more thoughts, more “thank you!”s and “got it!”s. I’m guilty of this too, but I blame others for this — everyone else sends “thank you!” emails to finish off a thread, so then I feel like I have to send these emails too. It’s pointless.

— Sometimes, even most of the time, a writer or photographer answers their own question if you give them an hour or two.

— People you don’t want emailing you are only encouraged to email you more when you send them an email telling them you aren’t interested in whatever thing they’re offering you.

And these are all problems, because email makes my day look like this (screenshot from RescueTime):

So, what’s the solution?

Speaking of sexism and writing about music. Here about is a comment, probably my favorite of all time, from Gorilla Vs. Bear. When I worked at Pitchfork I saw comments on his posts all the time from anonymous readers saying I had ripped off his posts, when everyone gets the same press releases, and if a post was reblogging someone else’s MP3 find or whatever, we would link back to that post. It was the early days of Pitchfork’s MP3 blog trial, it was a work in progress, but I always tried to attribute work.

I saw lots of comments like this one on Gorilla Vs. Bear before I started full-time at Pitchfork and long after I left, but I never quite saw any like this, comments that accused the writer of having gotten their job by sleeping with the boss during their internship.
I had never interned for Pitchfork. I wrote a trial news post for them when they still had open calls on their site, because I was desperate to get out of Arizona and write about music. They hired me to write news (for free!) while I still lived there, and so I would go out to my car during my lunch breaks from my job and do interviews in my car. The air conditioning would be too loud while I was trying to interview musicians, so I would turn it off and just ask questions. By the time Pitchfork had hired me full time, I had worked at CMJ as a news editor, I had written pieces for Pitchfork, Nylon, the Village Voice, Paste and Blender. I was (and still am) inexperienced, but I was proud of my work because 90% came from cold pitching — sending clips to editors I had never met or talked to and hoping they would hire me only because they liked my writing. And I did get asked to write for places. So when I started seeing comments like this, it really hurt to have all my work reduced to “you slept with your boss.” I had written about music since I did zines in middle school, I had been on the school newspaper staff since I was in forth grade, I had done interviews in 100+ degree cars, had moved to New York with a suitcase and worked full-time at a music publication for less than $19,000 a year; I had, during that year in NYC, spent my lunch hours laying out clips and mailing them in manila envelopes to editors in the city, and written and interviewed people all hours of the day and night because I didn’t have money to go out or own TV anyway. But whatever, I was just some girl who slept with her boss.

By the way, if you can find me one angry post about a male Pitchfork reviewer that implies that they slept with their boss to get their job, I would LOVE to see it. I mean, you could send me 100 angry take-downs of Pitchfork writers, but I doubt any of them take that route.

I’ve got a lot more examples, so maybe I’ll dig them up and share them. But I’ll end this with a comment on an ABC Amplified interview I did with Donald Glover.

He did not! The human race is over.

[via Tumblr]

I also just recommended theinterviewr.com to someone because of its clean interface. It’s a website that lets you schedule interviews, place calls, and store your audio. According to a recent blog post, they’re going to add low-cost transcription services, too. (EDIT: Looks like they added it, it starts at $1/minute for a 10-day turnaround, which is average for online transcription, but you can definitely find someone on craigslist for cheaper). That could potentially make it an all-in-one solution to interviewing and transcribing.

Since I haven’t been doing many phone interviews, I haven’t used the site, but I tried scheduling a call in advance to test it out anyway. You just fill out a screen on the site that asks for the interview day and time, and your number and the number of your interview subject. I don’t think the program automatically called me, like I expected it to. Or, if it did, maybe I didn’t pick up. I do that — or don’t do that — a lot. Later that night I tried simply adding in the info and placing the call, which worked perfectly. The call quality both on the call and on the recording was clear, not amazing, but definitely better than Skype. There was little delay. And when I ended my call the audio was there, ready to download or play in the browser immediately.

The interface is simple: a calendar for scheduling, a simple address book for keeping call contacts, and, on the interview screen, a place to keep notes both before and during the call. The log is actually really clean and nice:

There are just two major problems.

— No volume meter. I talked about why I need a volume meter before. Basically, when you aren’t using a physical tape recorder, when you can’t see the button pressed and the tape spinning, that digital meter becomes the most comforting thing in the world. You want visual confirmation that your recorder is, in fact, recording.

— No way to record without placing the call yourself. Most writers and journalists place their own calls, of course, so this isn’t an issue. But many entertainment journalists have to rely on publicists connecting the calls, so they usually call you. This won’t work for those calls.

And there’s one minor problem: cost. TheInterviewr charges .20 cents per interview, .10 per interview if you buy a $12 one-year membership. They start you off with a $5 credit, though, so it’s easy enough to try.

One possible worth-it situation is if you are interviewing someone overseas. Though I haven’t tried it, you could, hypothetically, get a cheaper call by routing it through TheInterviewr’s service, so their US-based number calls you, while they connect you to the overseas number. Again, haven’t tried it, but it could work. According to their FAQ, international numbers are fine, and their calls come from a 206 number.

Update: The Interviewr’s Roger sent me a few clarifications. Here’s his email:

I happened across the post you made on the site, and just thought I’d point out a couple things..

1) cost.. The price is per call, which when you look at most phone system, those are per-minute usually. And our per-call price is the same international. Obviously, we can’t operate a call system like this for free, so we have to charge somewhere. What we do charge is actually well-below industry standard though, where some places would charge 12-20 dollars a month, not 12 a year. And the feedback has been positive from our other users.

2) If you are a subscriber, then you can actually have calls come from any number you want it.

3) We are releasing a browser phone shortly, but will give you volume control via your computer, but not getting into too many details til it’s available. :)

4) Transcriptions, yes, they may be cheaper on Craigslist, but we actually have a team of professionally trained transcriptionists working with us, and our main transcriptionist actually teaches at a transcription school locally. As for the prices, they are actually based on industry standard, and has actually been well received as well as we have already done over two dozen transcriptions since it launched.. FYI, it actually launched a couple weeks early for our 12 dollar a year subscribers, as they also get access to features early.

We’re actually not that new-ish, we’ve been in business for over a year, and have dozens of interviews being conducted every day, sometimes more.

Other factors with us, is we provide top-notch support and answer most tickets within minutes usually to help resolve any issues.

Anyhow, this ended up being longer than planned, I just wanted to point out a few things :)

Friend: A Gay Kid

Cobain was friends with a gay student at art school, which caused his classmates to think he was gay, as well. “I started being really proud of the fact that I was gay even though I wasn’t”, he later told The Advocate.

Key phrase here is “art school.” Wouldn’t it be hard not to have a gay friend at art school? I rate this story as 200% believable, because 200% of the people at this school probably told this exact story to their friends, except in their stories, they tell people they were friends with Kurt Cobain.

http://www.nme.com/photos/50-things-you-never-knew-about-nirvana/235114/1/1#8

Friend: J Mascis

Kurt said, ‘you should join my band,'” Mascis recalls. “I think he was sick of the guy Jason [Everman] who was in the band at the time, and thought I should play guitar. I didn’t think much about it.”

http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/dinosaur-jr-leader-says-he-nearly-joined-nirvana-twice-20121004#ixzz28xEAji9X

80% true. But 0% on the ‘I didn’t think much about it’ link. Mascis thinks about this 24-7-2,500, or however many days it’s been since Dinosaur Jr. reunited: “Morning Lou, I could have been in Nirvana. Can you grab that cord for me? I could have been in Nirvana.” Etc.

Friend: Ren and Stimpy (Bob Camp)

One day, this scraggly kid came in and said he wanted to write a song for Ren & Stimpy, and it was Kurt Cobain … They [TV bosses] said, “Yeah, that’s great,” and they threw it in the wastebasket.

http://www.nerdist.com/2010/12/nerdist-podcast-49-billy-west-not-ready-for-publication-yet/

50% chance of truth. Threw what in the wastebasket? A demo? Sheet music? R&S debuted Aug 1991, “Smells Like Teen Spirit” came out a month later. So the track came in from an unknown, and made it up to the ‘TV bosses’ and they threw it away. How often does your boss open his/her own mail? I haven’t opened my own mail in years, and I’m nobody’s boss. I might have an unreleased Nirvana track in there. (That’s also why I don’t throw it away and just stack it up and sleep on it, just in case.)

Friend: Duff McKagan

On the flight, he sat next to Duff McKagan of Guns N’ Roses. Despite Cobain’s own personal animosity towards Guns N’ Roses and specifically Axl Rose, Cobain “seemed happy” to see McKagan. McKagan later stated he knew from “all of my instincts that something was wrong.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurt_Cobain

Okay, I rate this 90%. McKagen’s from Seattle. He was flying from L.A. to Seattle first class, totally believable. I’m into it. Part of me thinks that maybe Cobain wasn’t flying first class, and that maybe McKagen said “Hey man! How are you feeling?” as he strode past him to go to the bathroom in the back or something. But then again, first class passengers never walk past coach. Also Duff claims to be the last person Cobain ever talked to, ever. OK!

Friend: Billy Ray Cyrus

“He was one of those guys that became a friend to me that I never expected. We met at a venue one night, some big coliseum somewhere—his rig was pulling out and mine was pulling in—and I was standing in the shadows, 1 a.m. in the morning, and he’s ‘Hey man, congratulations—you pissed the whole world off.’ We shook hands, and I said, ‘Thanks, man… I love what you all do.'” After that, Cobain congratulated him at an awards ceremony when most of his peers did not. ‘We crossed paths a couple more times,’ says Cyrus.”

http://www.gq.com/entertainment/celebrities/201103/billy-ray-cyrus-mr-hannah-montana-miley

Uh, how can you rate the truth of this? Cyrus also tells stories about encounters with Michael Jackson and reaching out to Anna Nicole Smith in this GQ story. Either Billy Ray Cyrus is the most intuitive, empathetic man in the world or he kills everything he touches.